Master of Engineering
From Freepedia
A Master of Engineering (or M.Eng.) degree is a specific master's degree for courses in the field of engineering.
In the UK
In the United Kingdom, the MEng is an undergraduate award, available after pursuing a four year course of study at a university. These are taught courses, with only a small research element in the final year, and are not available as postgraduate qualifications in most cases. Most British universities offer both the traditional three year courses in engineering, leading to a BSc or BEng, as well the MEng. A few, such as Cambridge, offer only the four year MEng although even these make provision for leaving at the end of the 3rd year.
In terms of course structure, MEng degrees usually follow the pattern familiar from bachelor's degrees with lectures, laboratory work, coursework and exams each year. There is usually a substantial project to be completed in the fourth-year which may well have a research element to it, and a more teaching-based project to be completed in the third year. At the end of the third year, there is usually a threshold of academic performance in examinations to be to be reached to allow progression into the final year. Final results are, in most cases, awared on the standard British undergraduate degree classification scale, although some universities award something structurally similar to 'Distinction', 'Merit', 'Pass' or 'Fail' as this is often the way that graduate master's degrees (e.g. the MSc) are classified.
MEng courses were introduced in the UK in the mid1980s in response to growing competition from technical-degree graduates from continental Europe, where degree courses are often longer than the usual three years in the UK. There was a feeling among recent graduates, the engineering institutions, employers and universities that the longer and deeper study offered on the continent needed to be made available to UK students too. Since to obtain a taught Master's degree in the UK typically already took an additional year after a bachelor's degree, it was decided that this extra year would be made a formal part of the undergraduate course and, instead of taking both bachelor's and master's degrees, students would proceed to become Masters in a single step of four years.
Since its introduction, the MEng has become the degree of choice for most undergraduate engineers as was intended. The most common exception to this is international students who, because of the substantially higher fees they are charged, sometimes opt to take the tradition BEng/BSc route where that is available. Most of the engineering institutions have now made an MEng the minimum academic standard necessary to become a Chartered Engineer. Graduates who graduated before the changes in the rules will still be allowed to use their bachelor's degree for this purpose and those who have earnt a bachelor's degree since the changes can usually take some additional courses (known as 'matching sections') over time to reach an equivalent standard to the MEng.
The MEng is one of a number of 'new' undergraduate master's degrees recently introduced in the UK; they are also commonly available in mathematics (MMath), physics (MPhys), chemistry (MChem) and biology (MBio or MBiol) as well as other subjects. A more comprehensive list may be found on the Wikipedia page for British degree abbreviations.
In the US and Canada
In the United States and Canada, the Master of Engineering degree is a Professional Master's degree offered as a coursework-based alternative to the traditional research-based Master of Science. Unlike the Master of Science degree, the Master of Engineering degree is regarded as a terminal degree. It is typically a two-year program, and many universities allow students to choose between the Master of Engineering and the Master of Science.
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